John Podesta speechwriter tries his hand at fiction

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26 year old Grant Ginder, a speechwriter for Center for American Progress head John Podesta, is coming out with his first novel this June, entitled “This is How it Starts.”
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Author Grant Ginder dreads it when John Podesta decides to start a speech with a joke. It’s not because Podesta isn’t funny; on the contrary, the head of the Center for American Progress is known for his pointed wit and dark sense of humor.

It’s because Ginder, 26, whose first novel is slated for release in June by Simon & Schuster, is also Podesta’s speechwriter. And jokes for his boss, he said, are “the hardest things to write.”Ginder’s forthcoming book, “This Is How It Starts,” a sharply observed coming-of-age novel set in the world of Washington’s post-prep-school power elite, is packed with sly humor. Yet at his day job, Ginder said, sometimes he and his colleagues will go through “countless iterations” of a funny line — only to hold their breath when it is delivered, hoping it will not bomb.

Speechwriting, he said, is “more difficult than writing fiction, I think.”

Creative writing certainly seems to have come naturally to Ginder, whose first foray as a novelist centers on Taylor Mark, a recent college grad who finds himself an outsider on the inside of the nation’s political club. Plugged into the Georgetown scene through a college pal, he lands a job on the Hill and a place on the guest list at every “must” event — but the closer he gets to the heart of it all, the less he finds beating there.

The novel bursts with the names of real D.C. institutions, both official and de facto — Cafe Milano, The Palm and Smith Point all make appearances — along with some less-than-subtle stand-ins: One of the characters works as a gossip columnist for a newspaper called Politik.

Though clearly intimately familiar with the popped-collar scene and its products, Ginder himself went to a public high school in Orange County, Calif. He started studying the capital’s political and social culture during the summer before his junior year of college, when he interned on the Hill with Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.).

“It was a very cool experience,” he said. “I definitely learned a lot. It was hilarious being around the other interns.”

While he was there, he said, “I definitely had a kind of catalog of facts and observations going” — although he is quick to add that, while his characters have “obviously been influenced by various people I’ve known,” the novel is “purely fiction.”